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For its 9th Annual Festival PRONK! partnered with the STEP UP Coalition to support to the Community Safety Act (CSA). The goal of the collaboration was “to use music, dance and art to bring attention to injustices and inequalities in our city and encourage people across Providence to stand behind the legislation.”
The STEP UP Coalition is made up of the Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM), Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Olneyville Neighborhood Association (ONA) and various other activist groups in Providence. The CSA is a citizen-proposed ordinance that would address racial profiling and other abuses of power by police. Mayor Jorge Elorzarecently said the CSA could pass before the end of the year.
This is the ninth year for PRONK! (Providence HONK!) which takes place every Indigenous People’s Day. It is not a Columbus Day parade. Local bands, such as the Extraordinary Rendition Band, What Cheer? Brigade, and Kickin’ Brass participated, as well as bands from around the country. Organizers describe PRONK! as “a cacophonous street celebration with out of town brass bands! We are a street intervention like no other, with outfits and misfits from Rhode Island and beyond – musicians, artists, activists, makers – taking over the streets as part of the Providence HONK Parade.”
Organizers go on to say that PRONK! “spawned from the original HONK! Festival in Somerville, MA that has “grown into a new type of street band movement—throughout the country and across the globe—outrageous and inclusive, brass and brash, percussive and persuasive, reclaiming public space with a sound that is in your face and out of this world.”
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The chronicle of Cape Verdeans, who celebrated their Independence Day this month, in the Ocean State has proven to be one of the most impressive demographic stories, with local African American leaders like scholar Bela Teixeira, labor organizer Mike Araujo, and NAACP President Jim Vincent all tracing roots to the island nation. Now a documentary that recently was filming interviews in Rhode Island, THE HEART OF AMILCAR CABRAL, is set to narrate the story of their independence struggle and one of their founding fathers.
“It is really a complete pleasure to support your film project because it is living history really,” says Dr. Richard Lobban, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Rhode Island College, who was a reporter at the time and wrote stories from the field. From 1961 until 1974, Amilcar Cabral and his African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde/Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC) engaged in an intense war against the Portuguese who had colonized Africa. Though Cabral himself was not a Communist, the conflict became one of the hot fronts of the Cold War.
“Cape Verdeans have always seen themselves, because they are an immigrant Afro-American population, as not having an attachment to the African American experience, or at least the same attachment to the African American experience,”Araujo told me several months ago. “The Cape Verdeans in Providence do one job in Providence. They were all longshoremen. The ILA [International Longshoremen’s Association] 1328 is an entirely Cape Verdean union. It was founded by Cape Verdeans. It’s officers are still Cape Verdean-majority. It’s also a very protective union. They were also able to keep the docks honest, which is the problem that they had in Boston and in New York. And they were able to keep it open to Cape Verdeans, most importantly!”
“Cape Verdeans were relatively politically sophisticated to a degree more than Azoreans. And also because of the amount of shipping that passed through there they were also more cosmopolitan,” he said. “They identify as an international people.”
This is a point that is vital to understand because the tensions on the macro level that played out in Cape Verde were staged on the micro level in Rhode Island. For example, the contradictions of race and racism impacted Cape Verdean identity in unique ways. Segregation in schools and churches would confound a population that in some senses does not regard itself as an African population as much as from an island near Africa that has its own unique traditions and culture. The expansion of Brown University and gentrification effectively dispersed a historic neighborhood by the end of the 1960’s.
These were the challenges that Cabral and his contemporaries were encountering when they began an armed insurrection against the same types of systemic racism and exploitation perpetrated by the Portuguese. And this is where the PAIGC’s links with the Communist bloc states proved to be so natural, it was because the ethos of internationalism, which defined Communist solidarity in the anti-colonial struggle, were part of Cape Verdean identity.
“Amilcar Cabral was from Angola, so there was this recognition, the same way that Che [Guevara] was from [Argentina], not Cuba, that there’s an internationalism,” said Araujo.
Guenny Pires, who is directing the documentary, says “I grew up with his story but I never really knew what happened and why. I was little when we got independence in 1975 so I could not understand a lot of stuff… I thought as a filmmaker it would be my responsibility to tell this story.”
Pires says the film was created “to honor Cabral and to keep his message alive.”
Click the Player Below to Listen to the Complete Interview!
Having been produced over the past 15 years, he is now seeking funding for the completion of the picture. And, because his production is partnered with a non-profit, all donations are tax-deductible.
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Hundreds gathered in Providence last night to celebrate the lives of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, two men killed last week by police. The celebration was organized by a myriad of people representing many groups, and was modeled on a New Orleans-style second line funeral procession. Organizers provided the following explanation:
The Second line funeral march is an African American tradition most associated with New Orleans, it has in its roots a deep and unmistakable connection to African funeral tradition. In America the 2nd line was a way to mark the passage of Black life and demand recognition of our basic humanity. In the 2nd line the tears are mixed with joyous songs and expressions of Black kinship. In the 2nd line it was traditional to carry a decorated umbrella symbolic of protecting one from a storm as a shield, but also as an expression of beauty facing the heavens, shining in the rain. It is also traditional to carry a handkerchief for our tears but also as a flag of defiance and a part of our dance.
“The 2nd line can be seen as just a parade but it is a deeply powerful and solemn expression of homecoming and love. This invitation is offered in that spirit. Come mourn, come weep and wail, come to love, come to share and build power, come to witness, come to sing.”
Alton Sterling was a 37-year old black man killed by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Philando Castile was a 32-year old black man killed by a police officer during a routine traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Castile’s girlfriend and her 4-year old daughter were in the car.
The march ended on the water at India Point Park, where there were performances, remembrances and a final act of throwing flowers into the water.
Below find photos and video of the event. Much of the video was recorded by RI Future contributor Andrew Stewart.
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Leiko is a group that bears some striking resemblance to the first Velvet Underground album, back when Nico was lending her ethereal voice to the proceedings. They describe themselves as goth-folk. Check out their music below to take in some of this sonic odyssey!
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Opposition to Invenergy‘s proposed $700 million fracked gas and diesel oil burning power plant, planned for Burrillville, dominated the 90th annual Ancients & Horribles Parade in neighboring Glocester on the 4th of July. First and second prize for best in show went to floats opposing the power plant.
The prize for “Most Politically Incorrect” float went to a truck emblazoned with a “Trump” campaign sign that displayed a series of posters of State House leadership that cited a series of political scandals and unpopular decisions. This was followed by two trucks full of Trump supporters, with one man waving a large Confederate Flag in support of the putative Republican presidential nominee. The presence of racist Confederate Flags in the parade was disturbing. I counted at least four.
Governor Gina Raimondo, perhaps sensing that her presence would not be appreciated, did not march in the parade. Her presence was felt, however, in every float that expressed dissatisfaction with her close association with corporations like Invenergy and Goldman-Sachs. Tracey Potvin Keegan rode a bike dressed as the governor, with bags of Goldman-Sachs money hanging like saddlebags and a $700 price tag on her head.
Marching in the parade were Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed and Representative James Langevin. Whitehouse did not escape criticism for his early support of Invenergy’s power plant. A woman marching with the power plant protesters held a sign with a quote from Whitehouse that said, “If I look back 20 years from now and I can’t say I did everything possible, I’ll never be able to live with myself.”
After first supporting the power plant, Whitehouse later back tracked, saying that weighing in on the issue would be inappropriate. Many in Burrillville and the surrounding areas feel betrayed by Whitehouse’s position, feeling that his reputation as the Senate’s strongest environmentalist is mere political posturing.
Almost as unpopular as the governor are the gypsy moths, who have infested the area and strip entire trees bare of foliage. One group of marchers came dressed as a gypsy moth caterpillar, with the words, “It’s raining poop” on it’s tail end.
The parade featured an appearance by Tony Lepore, the Dancing Cop. Lepore sported his new uniform, emblazoned with a special “Dancing Cop” patch, instead of his former Providence Police Officer uniform. Lepore’s career has been in free fall since he interjected himself into the incident late last year when a Dunkin Donuts employee wrote “Black Lives Matter” on a police officer’s cup. As a consequence of his words and actions Lepore lost his annual gig directing traffic downtown and lost out on a replacement gig directing traffic in East Providence.
Governor Raimondo is due to meet with Burrillville residents on July 18.
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Rhode Island celebrated World Refugee Day on Saturday in the People’s Park (Burnside Park) in downtown Providence. The Rufugee Dream Center’s Omar Bah, a Gambian refugee and now a United States citizen, was the emcee for the event. He noted that Rhode Island’s founder, Roger Williams, was a refugee from Massachusetts seeking freedom and safety in our state. Bah said that welcoming refugees is a Rhode island tradition that must be protected.
Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island sponsored the event.
On stage were cultural dances, poetry and music from around the world, including Colombia, Burma, the Congo, India and many more. The event ended with dancing from members of Rhode Island’s Syrian refugee community.
The United Nations notes that “World Refugee Day has been marked on 20 June, ever since the UN General Assembly, on 4 December 2000, adopted resolution 55/76 where it noted that 2001 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, and that the Organization of African Unity (OAU) had agreed to have International Refugee Day coincide with Africa Refugee Day on 20 June.”
This is the first outdoor World Refugee Celebration in Providence. Representatives David Cicilline and James Langevin, as well as Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, spoke briefly.
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The Free State of Jones once existed in America and was, at the time it stood, a commune spanning a massive stretch of land through Mississippi, terrifying the Confederacy with a small army made up of poor white farmers and runaway slaves.
Going into this film, I was expecting that, like many other war films, there would be a bit of commentary embedded within about today’s political scene. Yet I was totally blown away here, instead of getting a Civil War film you get an epic class warfare film that reaches into the pantheon of great historical literature, at different points alluding to the contemporary journalism of Marx and Engels, who wrote a great deal on the American war for Horace Greeley, as well as the magnum opus of W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America.
Newton Knight, played by Matthew McConaughey, is a Confederate field nurse who deserts when he is tired of seeing young men die in a war for rich men’s cotton and little else. He hides out in a swamp with a group of free slaves, including the valiant Moses Washington (played by Mahershala Ali). When a group of Confederate officers, led by Lieutenant Barbour (Brad Carter), begin to requisition civilian property in a fashion that favors the 1% and leaves the 99% high and dry, these war widows, sons left to defend the family while father goes to war, and a trickle of Confederate enlisted men who are sick of the carnage, slowly join the group. As a fully-integrated camp, they hate the Confederates. But they also have very little love for the Union and the northern industrialists who they defend. So they become a small third, independent state, repudiating the duopoly, that grows into a vivid example of what a functional American social democratic society can be.
They allow these working people to own small plots of land to till and farm, much akin to the ideas promoted by Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, William B. Greene and Josiah Warren around and after this time as part of what would later become known as “unterrified Jeffersonianism”, individualist anarchism. Keeping with this philosophy, they uphold individual rights regardless of race or gender and grant autonomy as a central tenet of their system, saying “no man aught to tell another man what he’s got to live for or what he’s got to die for”. Yet rather than allowing this individualism to fuel a nihilistic, corporate Libertarian dystopia, it instead proves to be the mortar that builds a mighty fortress that poses a significant threat to the rich on both sides of the Mason-Dixon. After the war, these folks end up becoming a force fighting for justice in the Reconstruction period, coming into harsh contact with the proto-fascist Ku Klux Klan and trying to preserve a chance for democracy.
This is the perfect movie to watch with a Trump supporter. For this entire year, I have been watching the Trump people with a mixture of horror and guarded admiration. While their candidate is a complete disaster, the fact is that these voters are not fascists, they are pissed-off poor white working class people who are pushing back against the neoliberal political order, much in the way that many working class British voters have lately done likewise with their yes vote for the Brexit. It is not that I necessarily respect Trump voters, even though their refusal to accept any other candidate shows fortitude and resilience, as much as I have less respect for white middle class Bernie Sanders supporters who, though they do not live in a swing state, are now saying we must compromise and vote for a “lesser evil” who is still evil. No, instead we should be doing like the people in The Free State of Jones did and accept that the only path to true liberation is casting off the duopoly. Trump has broken the Republicans perhaps forever, much as Knight broke the Confederacy, now it is the job of progressives to break the irreparable and irredeemable Democrats. This film can be used to break down some prejudices that exist within Trump voters and begin building class solidarity.
The fact is that northern progressives and lefties need to work on something that hinders their efforts to be progressive, a condescending, look-down-your-nose elitist air that shows contempt for the rednecks. Yet for all the harping they do about class solidarity, these progressives forget the word redneck comes from a Southern miners strike, that the rebellious workers who got into a pitched battle with management were wearing red bandannas on their necks for reasons that had less to do with blood and soil as much as proletarian toil. Go figure.
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Last week’s violence in Orlando at a gay nightclub was a major motivator for the recent protest action by PrYSM at Pride this year. The action, however, was part of a larger multi-evening dialogue about a schism within the LGBTQQIA+ community that has been present for some time which directly confronts and talks about the inter-connections between race, class, gender, sex, and orientation, a conversation that includes the use of words like “Marxism” and “Islamophobia” in ways that are light-years to the Left of what is being talked about by the mainstream press when reporting on Bernie Sanders. During my coverage of these events I heard some activists express disgust at how some of the Sanders supporters have carried on, particularly with regards to brow-beating black voters for not supporting the Senator from Vermont!
Steve Ahlquist’s excellent recent report on the events at the State House last week, wherein a woman of color, Vanessa Flores-Maldonado, was booed for mentioning police brutality, was the first domino in the chain of events that led to this. That blatant act of racism and misogyny so disgusted local activists of color that they felt it was imperative to hold another event at AS-220 on Friday, June 17 that would allow them to process through and mourn together in a safe place a man of color unleashing such violence against other people of color.
The evening began with a very emotional event that was so private I did not record audio or images. Several queer Muslims held a prayer service, the jumu’ah, attended by a variety of community members and allies, and led by a local Muslim professor who was sure to qualify that she was not an imam or Islamic scholar, just a prayerful believer who believed in God. The prayer leader had a queer niece who introduced her aunt and began to weep in the middle of her speech, saying at one point this was so important to her because “we as Muslims don’t talk about these things”. The congregation shared as one prayer mat a long and wide rainbow flag unfurled from the front of the main stage of AS-220. It was a breathtaking sight in its simplicity.
Following the prayer, the activists had a series of presentations articulating their feelings and emotions related to the events in Orlando. These included silly moments of singing classic gay karaoke tunes as well as moments of genuine sadness, with performers continuing to break down throughout. One instance was a queer male talking longingly of Omar Mateen, the Pulse shooter, asking in a painful tone not only why he had done these things but how he could have been so hurt by America’s white supremacist and homophobic culture to consider such violence legitimate. Another performer described his views as Marxist and queer while discussing how he is able to “pass” as white despite being a light-skinned Syrian.
Some friends of Noor Zahi Salman are apparently speculating that what actually happened was that Omar Mateen was about to be outed as gay — and went nuts. This could have broader implications since “Israel surveils and blackmails gay Palestinians to make them informants.” That clearly is speculative. But far more responsible than speculation that is streaming forth from your TV.
The point that many of these queer and allied Muslims shared, regardless of their personal views regarding the Pillars of Islam, was that the Pulse shooter was one of them for multiple reasons and that his actions were an explosion of nihilistic rage not at homosexuality being condoned by a decadent libertine Western society as much as this self-proclaimed enlightened Western civilization being the central organ of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and imperialism in the world today. They pulled no punches, including a moment when Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were displayed in large glossy photos onstage as part of a musical number that repudiated both Democratic and Republican racism. One of these performances included a line that summed up these sentiments, “Not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you!”
The next day was Pride. Throughout the day, white stage performers were consistently, when referring to Orlando, using derogatory language about Mateen that ‘othered’ him while failing to articulate any recognition of him as potentially bisexual or as a member of a religious minority currently experiencing a tremendous level of state-sponsored violence at home and abroad. There was zero recognition of how our war on Afghanistan would have radicalized him. Instead, he was described as a “thug” or “hoodlum” by the MCs, which included one white drag queen wearing a Clinton campaign button. Backstage, one could spy David Cicilline and Jorge Elorza yucking it up and totally at home in a corporate Pride event.
After the PrYSM action, they decamped from the Pride site and went to India Point Park to hold an alternative evening celebration. While Gina Raimondo and her husband, two people who have made a living off corporate welfare while demonizing pensioners, were greeted with adulation by the crowds at the Pride parade, these people of color were celebrating genuine diversity and actual progressive values.
Statistically speaking, we know that people of color and particularly African Americans are the most Left-leaning voting bloc in both the Democratic Party and the American population. Surveys have shown they are in favor for abortion and LGBTQQI rights, gun control, Affirmative Action, universal healthcare, expansion of Social Security, free college tuition, and even wealth redistribution via a progressive income tax and reparations for slavery or other instances of historic systemic white supremacy.
In other words, these are the people who would be by default akin to Scandinavian social democrats. The reason Bernie Sanders failed to make significant inroads this year with the black vote was because he ran a typical white northern liberal presidential campaign, centering his energies on white middle class population centers known for progressive attitudes, such as college campuses and middle class communities, while failing to reach into the black community population centers in a meaningful fashion, though the younger generation, many of whom are first-generation college students, in certain instances did embrace his candidacy. (How Tad Devine, a native of South Providence, could not figure that one out is truly bizarre.) Indeed, in a recent report on The Real News Network, it was said:
[T]he below of the Democratic party is black folks. We’re about 25 percent of that party. And if our presence was going to transform the party, we’d be seeing a very different kind of party politically. Black folks are the most left-leaning constituency in the United States, that’s been shown generation after generation.
Those facts in the macro sense defined the generational and ethnic gap between the PrYSM and Pride celebrants in the micro sense.
These politically-engaged young people of color did not feel like Bernie Sanders campaigned to them this year and feel like Jorge Elorza is a phony, playing heartstrings with his story of humble upbringing on the West End while failing to vocalize any critique of the financial institutions that are now holding Providence hostage at a time when Wall Street has lower popularity than the Johnston landfill. They understand that they could be the base of a progressive political leader but instead they are ignored by politicians while real estate interests and Brown University gentrify historic black neighborhoods on the East Side, in the West End and South Providence. They know that the Democratic Party is a force trying to destroy their community so to break up their progressive voting bloc’s power in city and state government. These are the points of conversation I had with various activists over the last few days leading up to the Pride action and so define the coordinates of where any actual post-Sanders movement is going.
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Midway through Gasland director Josh Fox’s new film How To Let Go Of The World (And Love All The Things Climate Can’t Change), the filmmaker comes to the stark conclusion that most people in the mainstream press are not saying out loud: climate change is here, it is already impacting our world, and we are well past the time when mythical natural gas “bridge fuels,” like those proposed for use in Burrillville would have been of any use to our civilization.
Picking up where his previous documentary about opposition to fracking left off, he goes on a globe-trotting journey to the Amazon rain forest, the Pacific islands, China, and everywhere in between to visit communities that are opposing fossil fuel infrastructure expansion while confronting the onset of the crisis. Yet unless one thinks this is all doom and gloom, think again, it is in reality a celebration of solidarity and includes within its coordinates the potential salvation of our civilization.
We witness the beauty of South American indigenous people rowing miles into the jungle to clean up oil spilled by reckless fossil fuel companies and the courage of Pacific islanders who form a blockade out of canoes trying to hinder the passage of an Australian tanker. There’s the majesty of the Chinese solar panel entrepreneur whose industrial-level output of renewable energy implements would put cranes in the air across the Ocean State. And here in America we see the aftermath of super storm Sandy as a preview of what is in store for all the coastal cities in America, including Providence, with 384 miles of coastline in the Ocean State that are in dire need of renovations and reinforcement to accommodate rising sea levels.
Fox’s operational budget and cinematography are notably hands-on, DIY. He has amazing panoramic views of the landscape because of a trusty self-flown drone he pilots with relative ease around the sky looking down on the decimation of climate change. One needs only recall the majesty of works by Dziga Vertov to see his film occupying a continuity that will rank it alongside other great works of documentary.
It is intended as a call to action. I hope that Sen. Whitehouse and George Nee will see this film and consider its points carefully. The climate crisis provides us with great opportunities but they begin with understanding that the Democratic Party is not going to be a force for change in the face of this emergency and that instead it is going to come from the masses of people who band together in the face of calamity.
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For the second time Mayor Jorge Elorza has opened the City of Providence to a fantastic festival combing international and local artists and performers. Elorza envisions PVDFest as one day becoming as important to the city as SXSW is to Austin, TX. Todays press conference to kick off the event was attended by Senator Jack Reed and Close Act Theater, amulti-disciplinary street theater company from the Netherlands making its East Coast debut with Saurus.
Last years’ arts festival was great. I expect big things this year.
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If you have been up to Thayer Street within the past few months you probably have noticed a series of new parking meters being installed on the roadway. These new meters are part of an effort to raise monies for the city that have been wildly unpopular.
There are several issues that are coming up for patrons as they try to visit the stores. First, the meter system has proven to be confusing and not as user-friendly as hoped. Second, the maximum time limit for parking is in fact far too short for anyone who wants to go out to eat at Andrea’s Restaurant, have a few drinks at the bars, or see a movie at the Avon.
And that in turn leads to the third problem. The meters, which were billed by the city as a way to bring in more customers, are in reality chasing away business. Storefronts have been vacated and left that way for spans of time that have not been seen before. Grosses are down for businesses. One of the longest-lasting Providence shopping centers in its history which has brought in a consistent line of high-spending clientele is effectively being given a slow and painful death sentence.
Richard Dulgarian is the owner of several properties on College Hill and the Avon Theater with his brother Kenny. His family has been doing business on the street for decades and has started this petition online calling for the removal of the parking meters. He sat down for an interview with me and explained his consternation.
“First they did one street, then another street, then they came up with parking pay stations. It’s happening over the last year, I think, and every time one section goes in, it was affecting my business, it would go down a little bit. You know, it’s like peeling off a band-aid one little bit at a time, you keep thinking that was the last tug,” he says.
“It doesn’t make it pleasant. Next time you’re thinking of coming here, he’s going to remember parking meters didn’t work, he had to find a merchant to help him out, and he’s going to go somewhere else. These things are not friendly and our business has gone down. Not just ours, other businesses on the street, they’re all reporting their grosses are off up to 40%, some more, and how can you sustain that? We’re seeing vacancies like we’ve never seen before. I’ve been on the street forty years and, I’m not saying a business never went out of business, but within a couple of days something took its place. Now we’ve got eleven empty storefronts, last time I checked, and no one is coming in.”
“This administration has destroyed in a year what it took 50-70 years to build up!”
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If ever the history of a nation deserved our respect and awe, it is Haiti, whose history reads like a superhero epic. Haiti is the first and only nation in the world to be liberated by slaves. Unlike the United States, which rebelled against England with the help of France, Haiti found itself fighting for independence against France, England and Spain. Unlike the United States, who paid lip service to freedom and equality, Haiti banished slavery outright, showing the world how to eradicate one of the most evil institutions in human history.
At the RI State House New Bridges for Haitian Success held their Haitian Independence Day Awards. Several public officials were in attendance, including Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, Lt. Governor Daniel McKee and State Senator Juan Pichardo. Dr. Mark Lentz, Professor of Latin American History at Brown University gave an excellent short lecture on the historical importance of Haiti’s revolution.
New Bridges for Haitian success was founded by Bernard Georges.
Keynote Speaker Jean-Claude Sanon, a Boston area politician and radio personality born in Haiti, said, “Free yourself completely and continue to fight for the freedom of the entire world. Wherever there is injustice it is my obligation, as well as yours, to fight it.”
Romie Bois kicked things off with an amazing rendition of the United States National Anthem, and the event ended with a beautiful song in French.
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Tiverton High School recently made high school theater history by being the first group to perform HAIR: The American Tribal Lock Rock Musical. We had over 700 people attend with rave reviews.
This sent the former NBC10 “wingman” Justin Katz into a Twitter tizzy. Without seeing the show, he began to condemn it, me and the students and parents involved. He then went further and wrote an article – again, without seeing the show – on the Ocean State Current, referring to the production as “promoting child pornography”, “promoting the use of drugs” and encouraging children to use drugs.
For the record, Tams-Witmark allowed us permission to do the show with the creative challenges necessary to invite an audience in and not offend. I was supported by the administration, the district and the many parents involved throughout the process.
To top off his always extreme behavior, he allegedly sneaked into the Saturday evening performance – without paying, mind you! It is reported he then whipped out his laptop to secretly record the students. Did curiosity really get to Katz?? He took to Twitter again to brag he had finally seen the show…and still found it “inappropriate.” I have no idea what Mr. Katz intends to do with the images and video he allegedly recorded, but as a parent this concerns me greatly. [UPDATE: Katz says he did not sneak into the performance. He said watched the show at home via the internet.]
This is not the first time Katz has gone after me and the work I do in the community of Tiverton and throughout the state. Previously, he warned parents to keep their children away from me and my creative mind set! Mike Stenhouse, who runs the Ocean State Current has been formally warned in the past to keep Mr. Katz from slanderous attacks, which obviously is not working.
I am a single parent. I work with families who look towards the arts as a way to offer their children an outlet for arts enrichment and extended education. Katz has gone too far this time. His Koch brother funded “writings” will not save him. For someone who gives the Eucharist on Sundays, what the heck was he doing in a dark theater, recording students in the very show he was condemning and demanding be stopped!!??
Mr. Katz owes a formal apology to my students, to my administration, to my town. Most importantly, he owes an apology to the hundreds of parents I work with and trust me and my integrity. For that matter, Mike Stenhouse and Ocean State Current owe an apology as well. Can’t Stenhouse keep Katz in line?? It is one thing to have an opinion, it is quite another to think your opinion actually counts as the final word. It should be noted, I have been contacted by Mike Stenhouse after he got wind of my concerns and stated my concerns about Justin amounted to slander and he was “prepared to contact our attorneys.” Perhaps Stenhouse would like to see the Twitter feeds Katz had with several students- all minors. In the article Mr. Katz wrote for The Current, he admitted he spent a summer memorizing the album. Obviously things have changed, or perhaps he secretly wanted to be in the show?
The lesson for my students extended far beyond the understanding of an era in history. My students were given an ideal situation to see how fear and loathing tried to get in the way of art unfolding.
Editor’s note: This post has been updated to allow Justin Katz to respond to the allegation that he sneaked into the play.
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Roz and the Rice Cakes is one of the major up-and-coming bands in the Rhode Island music scene of the past decade. Their plaudits include voted BEST LOCAL BAND by the Providence Phoenix Best of 2010 Reader’s Poll, they were winners of the 2012 WBRU Rock Hunt, winners of Best Female Vocalist by Motif Magazine 2012, and were nominated for Providence Phoenix 2012 Best Local Act and Best Female Vocalist.
Composed of keyboardist and vocalist Roz Raskin, bassist Justin Foster, and drummer Casey Belisle, they have a sound that is reminiscent in some ways of the early days of No Doubt, specifically the period when Eric Stefani was still in the band and his younger sister was not the absolute center of attention. But it also has elements not unlike some of the more fluid periods of Dave Matthews Band, a much smoother sound. They write as an artistic statement:
We come together to bring forth new, genre-blasting, rhythmically charged melodies, sounding somewhat like the apocalypse…but having the most fun anyone could ever have doing it. We are constantly manifesting new ideas not only musically, but thinking of ways to engage our awesome listeners.
Raskin recently was nice enough to answer some questions for me regarding their recent national tour. We talked about the open road, events in the news cycle, and plans for the summer.
What was the most interesting part of your tour?
There are a lot of interesting aspects of tour. Meeting new people and bands, seeing old friends, exploring new cities. Every city has a unique music community and each night of tour we get to see a little bit of what music scene is like there first hand.
Any new ideas in terms of where you want to go lyrically or musically come out of visiting different parts of the country?
I think I’m probably way more influenced by the music around me than I even know. There are some truly amazing bands hustling right now, it’s really a great time for the arts in general. People like to say “everything has been done” but I’m not too sure about that.
Do you have any stories of a venue that really impacted how you thought about the rest of the tour, be it funny, moving, or even boring?
I’m very lucky and privileged to say that I have had many great experiences at venues and DIY spaces while touring. One in particular is from this past tour. We played at a venue called Tubecats in Hadley, MA. The space is run by a wonderful person named Van Kolodin who is in a band called WYDEYED. During WYDEYED’s set, they stopped half way through and Van gave a rad speech about how important safe spaces are and how it’s essential for showgoers to look out for each other at shows. If you see something say something kind of thing. I think it’s really progressive and important to combat issues of injustice head on and it was really inspiring to hear that kind of thing at a basement show which in the past had been a typically white male dominated space.
What are your plans in this coming summer regarding performance and recording?
This summer Roz and the Rice Cakes are taking a bit of a show hiatus to write and record a new record. I’ll also we writing and recording my solo music and with my new band HOTT BOYZ (featuring Sarah Greenwell of GYMSHORTS, Kate Jones of the Sugar Honey Iced Tea, and Dylan Block-Harley of Horse-Eyed Men). Definitely excited to have some time to really think and write about this past year of my life and take it what is happening in the world today.
Some of the really classic albums and musicians in American history have come out of periods of political and social excitement, be it Pete Seeger and Woodie Guthrie during the Great Depression or Bob Dylan and Joan Baez during the 1960s. It seems quite obvious that America over the past 5+ years has been in such a period of social unrest. Did you see anything on the road that indicates we could see artists such as the aforementioned ones emerging soon with some really populist protest music? Do you think Providence could be a place to keep an ear out for such music?
I think more so than ever before, my music has personally become very much connected to socio political movements. A lot of the lyrics I have written in the past year or so have explored ideas of the “other”. I also think that the social unrest you speak of has definitely manifested itself in music, DIY, culture. Art and music always reflects the times. I think one of the more positive recent themes I’m seeing is the idea making spaces safe and inclusive. Folks are sick of feeling unsafe, disrespected, and marginalized at shows and there is a very real effort combat that prejudice and discrimination.
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Haitian Heritage Month will be held Wednesday, from 11am to 1pm at the Rhode Island State House, Capitol Hill, 2nd Floor on Wednesday, May 18th at 11:00am-1:00pm. Organizers will be bringing together the Haitian community and allies into a community event serendipitously on the day of Haitian Independence. We want to recognize the courageous efforts of revolutionaries Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean Jacques Dessaline in creating the country of Haiti as the first and only free nation in history to be liberated by slaves. Local leaders will partner with official representation from Haiti will recognize historical efforts and courage and will inspire and celebrate the strength of the Haitian people within the United States.
The event is sponsored by the New Bridges for Haitian Success, Inc, in Providence, in partnership with Happy RI and Transform Credit. There will be a delegation from Boston will be attending and local and state local government official in RI.
Keynote speakers are Jean Claude Sinon from Massachusetts and Dr. Mark Lentz.
Guest speaker Senator Juan Pichardo from District 2. For further information contact Bernard Georges, founder and executive of New Bridges for Haitian Success,Inc.
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Lately I’ve been listening to ‘Hamilton,’ the hip-hop soundtrack to the breakout Broadway musical about founding father Alexander Hamilton, a rags-to-riches hero who led a revolution and helped form – for better or worse – a more perfect union.
Then I listened to Providence native Jared Paul’s new album ‘Get My Ghost’ and realized his music is every bit as powerful, and it touches on many of the same themes. If Hamilton is a hip-hop story about the birth of our nation, Jared Paul raps about a rebirth – a second American Revolution, if you will, to form an even more perfect union than the one inherited from the founding fathers and subsequent custodians.
Take, for example, Paul’s the second single from the new album ‘$8 Smoothie’ – a pot shot at capitalism’s exploitation and gentrification of health food.
He is definitely a different breed of radical than was Hamilton in 1776. But both activists fought for and wrote about a better economic model than the one they were born into.
“We sell organic fruits, but not to the poor,” Paul sings in ‘$8 Smoothie’. “Gentrify the East Side, financial segregation.”
Jared Paul grew up in Providence and is a resident artist at AS220. He’s long been known for his spoken-word performances, and the new hip-hop album feels like an extension, or a musical version, of those. In both mediums, Paul explores bluntly the failures of corporatism and capitalism.
“At the forefront of underground radical art for over decade, Jared Paul has toured relentlessly as a spoken word artist, emcee, and revolutionary organizer,” according to according to Black Box Tapes, the Denver, Colorado hip hop label that released the album. “‘Get My Ghost is the culmination of the last ten years of protesting, touring, and learning.”
In ‘Human Beings Migrate’ the last cut on the album, he sings, “If my clothes are slave made, then I’m a part of their chains. We’re all hypocrites, ain’t no one free of blame… but I don’t want that on my heart, don’t want it on my name. Just want to live clean, there’s got to be a way to erase the exchange: outsourcing oppression for the sake of convenience it’s an unequal trade.”
Like Hamilton, Paul doesn’t only wax poetic about building a better society. Both actually went to battle for their politics. Paul was a key organizer of the Occupy Providence protests. He was among the most outspoken radical voices during the months long protests in 2011 and 2012 and was rarely far from the front lines of a march or direct action. In 2008, he was arrested outside the Republican National Convention and in 2014 he was part of what the New York Civil Liberties Association believes to be the largest protest-related police settlement in history for that arrest.
But ‘Get My Ghost’ isn’t as overtly political. “This full length album showcases Jared’s unique storytelling abilities, making it more of a rap-album-as-memoir then a heavy handed political manifesto,” according to Black Box Tapes.
‘Five or Five Thousand’ is an anthem about how “every choice counts,” as Paul sings. “I go all in, whether five or five thousand.”
There’s a release party for the record on Tuesday, May 31 at Aurora in Providence. Between now and then, you should give the album a listen.
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From February to July 2016 the Providence Public Library is hosting an ongoing series of exhibits and events that toys with the notion of temporality and time. Called Portals, it engages in speculation while examining the past. On April 4 they will open their digital audio exhibit Providence 2050-Visualizing Tomorrow with a reception at 5:30 followed by a 6:30 discussion.
Meet the participants, enjoy a signature cocktail, and participate in a conversation with some of our interviewees where we’ll explore two main themes that emerged from the interviews:
Innovation: Providence as a place to take risks
Inclusion: Providence as a place that celebrates social justice
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Motif Magazine‘s newest issue features its annual music awards ballot and local activists were not impressed by its resemblance to tapioca pudding. Here’s what one voice had to say:
The Motif nominations list is emblematic of something that is at play in the Providence scene, a type of gentrification in the musical world that closely mirrors the physical gentrification of Providence’s historic black neighborhoods that hipsters play a roll in. I tried to be fair and tabulate the ethnicity of the entire nominee spread but stopped when, to paraphrase Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, I was blinded by the white. I mean for heaven’s sake the Reggae nominations this year were a veritable Caucasian invasion! It would be improper not to note that the Choral Act nominations do feature multi-ethnic groups like the Prism of Praise Community Gospel Choir and the Chorus of Westerly and I do give Motif credit where credit is due. Also I am quite pleased to see the Native American Eastern Medicine Singers nominated. But this is not the definition of multiculturalism or diversity in any sane sense, particularly when there was a minority of people of color in the DJ category.
Looking at the nominations spread in the magazine, one reads the following:
Nominees are mathematically selected from suggestions by booking at over 85 local venues plus local record labels, radio stations, and 17 of our Motif music writers.
I will admit that RI Future is a pretty vanilla outfit. But this sort of rubric is simply absurd. At a time when a film biography of NWA was a major hit last year, this is unforgivable and indicative of a kind of cultural banality that portends a future for Providence I want nothing to do with. There are those who will respond with the fact there is a hip-hop act category, but even there, only two acts nominated are actually people of color. I like Sage Francis as well as the next guy but, considering I was seeing him play a decade ago, I think that he has plenty of exposure and attention already.
The plain fact is that Motif does not seem to understand, based on their criteria for nominations, where black and brown people go to see their music performed. The churches and community centers, along with neighborhood clubs like those in South Providence, across the state are historically the sites of their entertainment. When I was a teenager, the great achievement for your buddy’s rock band was to play at The Living Room or Lupo’s. But for people of color, it is singing as an act at one of these aforementioned venues. People of color do not look for the same type of validation white performers do because of the long history of Jim Crow apartheid in Rhode Island. For example, Rudy Cheeks is apt to talk with folks about how he vividly remembers the old Stadium theater, now home of Lupo’s, used to have segregated seating wherein black and brown people were expected to sit in the balcony. That cultural heritage has a long-lasting legacy that Rhode Island has never properly grappled with. As such, polling these venues, intentionally or not, reflects a historic trend of segregation that has not been deleted from our society.
This is not an isolated incident, recently through the grape vine I heard of something eerily similar going down at Firehouse 13, located at the northernmost point of South Providence and just adjacent to the West End. Apparently there were parties at the venue prone to a condescending and exclusionary attitude towards certain local artists of color, demonstrative of a gentrification mentality that is well-known to stem from white artists and venues that do not understand the needs their neighbors.
This lack of connection to the community, if not outright hostility, is a real issue that we need to be mindful of as white people. The current socio-political coordinates indicate a coming opportunity for an inter-ethnic united front that would push back against this sad, strange world. Yet the alternative, white supremacy, comes in both blatant antagonism, personified by the Trump fans, but also the less-obvious kinds, defined by ignorant or antagonizing whites, including people who tend to browbeat black voters for not voting for Sanders. That might be a rather painful fact for the Sanders crowd to consider, but remember these words from Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Birmingham jail:
…I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. [Emphasis added]
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Created by our friends at Infowar Productions, a European Left outlet with no connection to that raving madman Alex Jones, this picture was created as an anti-austerity piece that repudiates the policies of the European Bank. However, with slight modification it can easily apply to the behavior of our own banking system, particularly since the Wall Street banks are controlling both agendas.
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The Matthewson Street Theater will be holding presentations of Antigone directed by Kira Hawkridge, Out Loud Theatre’s Artistic Director and URI alumnus, on March 25 and 26. In a time when we find ourselves in a world akin to that of Sophocles’ nightmares, it is worth seeking this story out. The director says the following:
The immediacy of the action and the longevity of the internal struggle of these two opposing forces is so visceral. We watch as both Antigone and Creon rail against the laws of morality and the laws of man. As they both navigate through fate, family, and their own faith. For me – this is a universal story of what it means to find your strength when the world believes you have none. What could be more relevant for creating a “public voice” than that?
The play is about, at least on the surface, the complicated legal battle between Antigone and King Creon over burial rites for her departed brother. Yet it also grapples with notions of civil disobedience and how one is supposed to ethically grapple with questions regarding the Other, the enemy who we would rather have desecrated than give respect. And in days when xenophobia and racism seem to be on the rise again, along with a hearty dose of misogyny, the art of the protest, glorified in this play, will prove to be one of the final tools of democracy in our society.
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